


we're in a war now (or something like it)

by ZoeBug



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Twilight Mirage, post TM:59, post-Siege of the Lineage Brighton mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 19:49:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16687822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBug/pseuds/ZoeBug
Summary: "I’m so tired of fighting my family, Gig.” It comes out in spite of you and you hate how small your voice sounds as it does. How quietly childlike. How naively despairing.When did you become like this? Stoic, steel-nerved Echo, when did you become so terrified?(Or: Echo and Gig, in the aftermath.)





	we're in a war now (or something like it)

**Author's Note:**

> Finally listened to the last chunk of Twilight Mirage after having fallen behind. And this moment really stuck with me because, boy howdy, did that last mission with Gig, Echo, and Even bring up some STUFF. Plus I needed a break from writing for school so
> 
> (I also adore second person POV, and since tabletop has this cool addressing the character POV thing built into how its presented, I played a little bit with that in the style.) 
> 
> Enjoy these angsty kids, yall.

The night of the siege of the Lineage Brighton, Echo, you start sleeping in the rec room with Gig.

The World Without End was never a quiet place when you were sleeping in the hammock you’d rigged out of netting and cargo fastenings. Sleeping so close to the outer hull meant you were always lulled to sleep by the continuous creaking of the ship’s exterior shifting. The hum of tech, its accompanying wires and fans, reverberated up through the walls and the floor.

You didn’t realize why you liked that so much until you’d been sleeping there for weeks after joining The Notion. One night you closed your eyes, stretched out on the cross hatching of netting, and in the vulnerable moments just before sleep, you could almost believe you were home.

The Tides of Harmony ships were bustling places; your home was a busy one. And manual production, on any scale, is rarely done without a bit of noise. The passing of feet or the rattling of metal carts at all hours of the day. The whine of electric tools or the low drones of laser tech. The raucous chatter of people gathered three rooms over sewing pair after pair after pair of socks.

Even without the nanites buzzing away from inside like the rest of the people on Harmony, you, Echo, grew up surrounded by the ambient noise of creation.

In the cargo hold of the World Without End, with the shifting of the hull and the whir of tiny motors in the floor, or even the distant noise any place it was docked, you could almost believe you were back home.

Ballad’s exhale over the call—a connection across only one sort of distance between you—is a burst of static, a confusing ache of a sound. It is loud and grating, it puts you on edge. It sounds a little like home too.

“Take care of yourself, Ballad,” you manage.

“You too, Echo.”

When you disconnect the call, the silence that falls is gutting.

The rec room is quieter than the hold ever was, but in the wake of your brother’s distant voice it’s even more so. It’s the kind of quiet that has your ears ringing—the kind you can hear your own thoughts echoing in.

Even Gig is silent now—Gig, who is normally only quiet in the face of hurting when the hurting is his own.

In the dim, all you can see from the couch against one wall is the lumpy arc of his body beneath the pool table, hunkered down in his nest of blankets and cushions. You almost think you can hear him breathing. But that also might be wishful thinking on your part.

You roll onto your side. Onto your back. You even try lying on your front, but nothing feels right. The pressure against the angles of your frame is all wrong and you can’t seem to settle. You decide to blame the couch for this.

You try not to think about the shreds of netting that used to make up your bed in the cargo hold—just another home of yours that no longer exists in any configuration recognizable as your home.

No matter how quiet he’s being, you don’t think Gig is asleep. He almost died today. And that is still true regardless of how little hesitation he showed leaping quite literally into danger.

The two of you have spent more than enough nights following almost dying (many of them in proximity to each other) to know how rarely sleep comes during them. On these kind of nights, sleep becomes a skittish and untrusting animal prone to bolt at the first quick movement or sharp noise.

“-though?” You realize Gig had been saying something but you only catch the end of it—the vacuum of your thoughts tugging the beginning of it away from your comprehension.

“Huh?”

“Ballad,” Gig clarifies. “He’s okay, right?”

You close your eyes and swallow. For a moment you can’t reply; for a moment your voice won’t come to you.

“He’s not hurt, if that’s what you’re asking. Not badly. He… Ballad’s tough. He’s lived through worse.”

You all have. You and Ballad both lived through uncertain terror leading to the Miracle and the chaotic scramble of its aftermath. Have lived through it all up to this point.

And if there is any mercy left in the Mirage, both of you will be able to say you lived through whatever’s next.

But for the first time in your life, you’re not sure both of you will make it.

And you’re not sure if it’s because you’ve changed—become haunted by Quire’s lingering at the edges of your thoughts—or if it’s because Ballad has changed and aligned himself with Advent.

Or perhaps it’s the world that has changed on both of you. On everyone you’ve ever known and loved. Has twisted around and split itself into multiple planets and crashed a multi-millenia-airborne fleet and has been roiling beneath your feet like the surface of Volition, rendering every decisive step a wobbling uncertainty.

“But he’s still with Advent?” Gig asks.

“Yeah,” you manage. “He’s still with Advent.”

“Sooooo,” Gig starts, drawing out the word, “we’re gonna have to fight him again, huh?”

“I guess so.”

“That sucks.”

“I’m so tired of fighting my family, Gig.” It comes out in spite of you and you hate how small your voice sounds as it does. How quietly childlike. How naively despairing. When did you become like this? Stoic, steel-nerved Echo, when did you become so terrified? “I think I’m just tired of fighting all together.”

“But you might have to, right?” Gig says after a moment.

You let out a shaky breath.

“I- Can we not talk about this right now? I just-”

“Sorry.”

“‘s okay.

You hear Gig take a deep and heavy inhale of the sort that you would attribute to someone steadying themselves if this weren’t Gig you were talking about. You’re almost entirely certain he’s doing it to fill the silence.

And as well as you know Gig, you’re not entirely sure if it’s because he is more perceptive than everyone gives him credit for, is doing it to put you at ease, of it he is just as uncomfortable with silence as you are.

“I think I’m gonna try ‘n clean up the cargo hold tomorrow,” he says into the quiet.

You want to say so many things to that. You want to tell him, _Thank you_. You want to tell him, _It won’t help, but thank you anyway_. You want to ask him if he has any siblings he worries about and fights with. You want to apologize for never having asked him that before.

But you can’t seem to manage anything in the end. So you stay quiet.

“You can watch Duck for me while I’m cleaning,” Gig continues. “He always gets too curious for his own good and as funny as it would be to watch him slipping around on the wet floor…” He cuts off, chuckling at his own image.

“Sure.” You’re pretty sure you say it out loud, but it’s so soft you’re not certain Gig heard you. But you don’t think it really matters in the end.

“Speaking of, so, the magnet thing, with the being stuck to the ceiling was actually super fun? Well, not counting the murderous mechs. But I was telling Kent we should work on making it, like, some sort of entertainment thing. Y’know?”

Across the dimness of the room, you can see the dark shapes of Gig’s arms gesticulating—enthusiastic shadows flickering in defiance of the stillness. You quietly take back every disgruntled thought you’ve had about how much Gig talks.

“Like, you could make a magnetized vest you wear,” Gig continues on. “And then you could get a low level version of the magnet and when you activate it, it’ll go _vrrp_ and you just go _shhwoop_ , _thunk_! And then you’re on the ceiling! I think it’d be fun! What d’you think?”

“I think Kent was really worried about you today.”

Gig’s monologue stops abruptly at that.

“Oh.” There is a smallness that Gig’s voice gets sometimes when he’s taken by surprise that never fails to make him sound young and fragile. And it’s what he sounds like on that single word. It hurts, hearing him like that. “Yeah. I guess. I mean, whatever, I was fine. It worked out fine, so what’s the big deal?”

“You almost died.”

“ _Almost_ being the key word there,” Gig replies, his chipper cadence _almost_ comes across unforced.

“And you would have if Even hadn’t-” You cut yourself off, swallowing against the churn of your stomach at the image of Even stalking into the cargo hold with the deadly gleam of his Cascabel gun in one hand and hardness in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Gig manages.

You want to get up from the couch and cross the room and grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he understands. You want to tell him, _People were killed today to save you from your own actions_. You want to tell him, _Just because you don’t care about your own safety, that doesn’t mean other people don’t worry for you_.

But you also want to tell him, _It’s not your fault those people are dead_. You also want to tell him, _You can’t be blamed for Even’s actions_.

You want him to understand, _I know how Kent feels because I, too, could have lost someone important to me today_.

But once again, you don’t say any of this.

“Me too,” is what you do say.

 _Echo, is there no fight you think is worth it?_ Inside of your head, you can hear Ballad’s voice on a loop, asking you over and over. _Echo, is there no fight you think is worth it?_

“I don’t want people to have to die,” you add. That same young wistfulness is in your voice again. You can’t stand the way it hovers at the edges of your words at the worst of times—lingers like the presence of restless ghosts. Like a regretful planet wishing it could have been better earlier, could been _enough_ in time to change the way things happened.

“Yeah, buddy,” Gig says. "Samesies.”

Gig falls quiet after that and stays that way. You doubt he’s run out of things to say, though. He’s Gig Kephart after all. Maybe the only things he has left to say are things he can’t bring himself to voice. The same as you.

Because you, Echo, are from the Tides of Harmony, and the way you learned to fill a silence was with the noise of making things. You don’t know how to do it otherwise. But that kind of optimism seems so far beyond your reach in the quiet dark of the rec room.

Right now, all you think you can manage is to keep hold of what you’ve already got—try to keep it all from falling apart completely.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos always appreciated!  
> You can also come say hi on [tumblr](http://zoe-bug.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/xiexiecaptain)


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